On Sunday, the Miami Herald released a chilling investigative report about the failure of Florida’s Department of Children and Families in recent years to protect the children of drug users. The project is the result of a yearlong investigation by two Miami Herald reporters, Audra D.S. Burch and Carol Marbin Miller.
In the past six years, the report stated, 477 children have died under the DCF’s watch — a number that far exceeds what was reported by the governor and lawmakers, the Herald’s executive editor said.
“The children were not just casualties of bad parenting, but of a deliberate shift in Florida child welfare policy. DCF leaders made a decision, nearly 10 years ago, to reduce by as much as half the number of children taken into state care, adopting a philosophy known as family preservation,” one section of the report reads. “They also, simultaneously, slashed services, monitoring and protections for the increased number of children left with their violent, neglectful, mentally ill or drug-addicted parents.
“The result: Many more children died.”
One case in particular demonstrates the department’s failure: In 2009, a 2-year-old girl was squeezed to death by her 19-year-old mother’s pet Burmese python. The DCF was fully aware of the mother’s addiction to various narcotics, and when child-welfare investigators visited the mother’s home, they deemed the snake’s habitat — a quilt safety-pinned over the open aquarium — safe. The investigators then made the mother and her boyfriend, who lived with them, sign a piece of paper stating they would not use drugs in front of the child.
According to the report, “‘While generally a safety plan would ask that the parents refrain from using drugs at all, versus ‘in the presence of the child,’ the parents were unwilling to agree to stop using drugs,’ DCF’s quality-assurance review of the investigation later explained.”
One night, after the mother took an unprescribed Vicodin and fell asleep, the snake slithered out of the habitat and into the child’s bedroom. The mother’s boyfriend found the snake in the child’s crib the next morning, still wrapped around her body.
This case, like the other 476 cases, could have been prevented.
Rather than pledge to end the DCF’s malpractice, Gov. Rick Scott has defended the department, saying it complied with laws that mirrored other state laws. Essentially, he said, DCF investigators don’t have the authority to rule a home situation too dangerous for a child. It may bring cases to court and let a judge decide, but as the Miami Herald report stated, many investigators simply don’t.
There are no gray areas in the DCF’s mishandling of children in Florida’s child-welfare system: The department needs more transparency, increased funding and better management.
Meticulously crafted reports such as this one from the Miami Herald don’t come often, but when they do, they affect policy and change. We hope, in this case, the change is speedy and the policies do more to protect children in the state of Florida.
[A version of this editorial ran on page 6 on 3/18/2014 under the headline "Florida’s child-welfare problem revealed"]
